S.J. County goes mobile with emergency alerts

Sunday

Jan 20, 2013 at 12:01 AM

STOCKTON - With new equipment installed and ready to go, local disaster-response officials are geared up to blast a warning directly to the mobile phones of anybody in San Joaquin County who could be in harm's way.

Zachary K. Johnson

STOCKTON - With new equipment installed and ready to go, local disaster-response officials are geared up to blast a warning directly to the mobile phones of anybody in San Joaquin County who could be in harm's way.

It's not delivered like a typical text message. It's called a "wireless emergency alert," which an increasing number of cellphones are able to receive through a national system that began rolling out last year.

Depending on the type and scale of the emergency, officials can target a specific geographical area, officials said.

So if there's a breach somewhere in the 1,000-mile network of levees in San Joaquin County, and you're in the neighborhood, your phone could tell you about the danger.

Which is why the county began putting the agreements and equipment in place as soon as it could, said Michael Cockrell, county director of emergency operations. "We have so many hazards in this county ... we (had) to be ready for this."

In the headquarters of the county Office of Emergency Services in French Camp, he showed how he could outline a small area of Stockton on a computer screen for a targeted blast of information to anybody within a few city blocks of a hypothetical chemical spill.

It could also be used to warn people of an out-of-control fire, keep people away from an armed criminal fleeing police or to send out an Amber Alert if a child had been abducted. In addition to Cockrell's office, the city of Stockton and the county Sheriff's Office have local authority to send out blasts through the system.

It would likely have been used during a gas-line break in Stockton last November, when crews went door to door with sirens and loudspeakers to evacuate a neighborhood, Cockrell said.

Existing methods of notifying the public about emergencies through radio and other means remain in place with the addition of the new, powerful tool, he said. It's one part of nationwide changes from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to warn the public in emergencies. And Cockrell said it opens up other new ways for local authorities to get the word out to local residents in future phases.

Not everyone will get the mobile notifications. Not yet. It depends on their cellphone carrier, the type of handset they're carrying and whether a particular cellphone tower has been brought into the system, he said.

According to FEMA, most cellphone providers are already part of the wireless-alert system, and most phones on the market will be compatible with the system by 2014.

And it's already been used in a crisis.

During a recent ice storm in Nashville, the National Weather Service sent out a warning to 1.5 million people, telling them to get home as quickly as possible, spokeswoman Susan Buchanan said. Some people were confused to see the warning on their phones, she said. "As with everything new, people are going to have to use it a few times before they get used to it." There wasn't a negative response to the mobile blitz, she said, but a few comments from people who described scenes in restaurants when every phone in the place went off at the same time.

In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, the system was used to warn people of flash floods and blizzards, she said.

Emergency officials said they want to be careful not to "cry wolf" with the new method of notification.

"We have to have a really high bar set. ... This is about notification to people who are in immediate danger," said Dan Keeton, the meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service office in Sacramento. But it was used around Sacramento in October, when tornadoes touched down in the area.

There are some kinks to work out in the system statewide, but for those whose job it is to warn people when they are in danger, wireless notification to mobile devices is a pretty big deal.

"The ability to put a warning right in the hands of the person that needs it is pretty awesome," Keeton said.